7 Factors that Make or Break Language Learners

By Luke Zimmermann

Do you know what makes or breaks a language learner? Why is it that some succeed in acquiring a second language and some do not? Are there factors in a person's personality, background or circumstances that play a major role in the language learning process? And if so, what are these factors and what can we do about them to help language learners become successful? All these questions came up in my mind when I was confronted with students who did not seem to learn in the usual ways and students who learned unusually fast.

In 25 years of language learning, linguistic study and teaching English as a Second Language, I have come in contact with many hundreds of language learners from all over the world and from many different backgrounds. I observed them, asked questions, thought deeply about language learning and finally decided to write down my thoughts and findings in this book. The information is organised into 7 chapters, describing factors that are crucially important in the language learning process. I do not pretend that this list is complete. One obvious example of an important factor that is not mentioned is 'motivation'. I am sure that while you are reading this book, you will think of more. However, the 7 factors described in this book, are not always that obvious or clear-cut and need some discussion.

This is not an academic book. It has been written in a style that is easy to read and is full of real-life stories and anecdotes. You are hereby encouraged to fill in your own experiences and test the statements made about language learning and the conclusions drawn. This book is meant to make you think, give you new insights and entertain at the same time. Also, numerous activities and language learning techniques have been included for you to try out.

Even experienced language teachers and language learners will still find a number of facts, ideas and activities that are interesting, unusual and useful.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Luke Zimmermann
• Release date: Sep 15, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223014447

Book preview

Luke Zimmermann

M.A Linguistics

First published 2003 as 7 by the Academy of English Language.

Second edition 2007 as 7 Factors That Make or Break Language Learners by Englishwithluke.com

Third, revised edition 2023 7 Factors That Make or Break Language Learners by Luke Zimmermann

©  Luke Zimmermann 2003 & 2023

This book is copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of private study, research, criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright Act, no part may be reproduced by any process without written permission. Enquires should be made by email to [e-mail].

Introduction

Do you know what makes or breaks a language learner? Why is it that some succeed in acquiring a second language and some do not? Are there factors in a person’s personality, background or circumstances that play a major role in the language learning process? And if so, what are these factors and what can we do about them to help language learners become successful? All these questions came up in my mind when I was confronted with students who did not seem to learn in the usual ways and students who learned unusually fast.

In 25 years of language learning, linguistic study and teaching English as a Second Language, I have come in contact with many hundreds of language learners from all over the world and from many different backgrounds. I observed them, asked questions, thought deeply about language learning and finally decided to write down my thoughts and findings in this book. The information is organised into 7 chapters, describing factors that are crucially important in the language learning process. I do not pretend that this list is complete. One obvious example of an important factor that is not mentioned is ‘motivation’. I am sure that while you are reading this book, you will think of more. However, the 7 factors described in this book, are not always that obvious or clear-cut and need some discussion.

This is not an academic book. It has been written in a style that is easy to read and is full of real-life stories and anecdotes. You are hereby encouraged to fill in your own experiences and test the statements made about language learning and the conclusions drawn. This book is meant to make you think, give you new insights and entertain at the same time. Also, numerous activities and language learning techniques have been included for you to try out.

Even experienced language teachers and language learners will still find a number of facts, ideas and activities that are interesting, unusual and useful.

Learning strategies

There is no one way to learn a language. Language learning strategies, indeed general learning strategies, are very individual. I became acutely aware of this when I met my Australian wife in Amsterdam in 1980 and tried to help her acquire the Dutch language. Dutch is related to English, but has a more complex grammar, both in terms of word order and word endings (inflections).

One day my wife came home from work with a question about Dutch word-order in subordinate clauses. The verb moves to the back of the subordinate clause. For example, translated into English: She often eats hamburgers. becomes She told me that she often hamburgers eats. I sat down with her and explained the grammar scribbling examples on a piece of paper. Because that is how I learn a language.

After about 10 minutes, she looked at me totally puzzled and said, I don’t understand a word you’re saying, got up and walked away. As far as she was concerned the discussion was over and she would work it out some other way. I sat there flabbergasted. How can somebody learn a language without understanding grammar?

I knew I was a good language learner. I knew that my way worked and part of it was understanding the grammar of a language so I could build my own sentences. I had learned fluent French in less than a year, while living in France. I had learned English quite well in Holland and while travelling and my German was not too bad either.

However, there was no doubt that my wife was also an excellent language learner. In fact, I had never seen anyone learn Dutch so rapidly. This baffled me for some time. I started observing her closely and especially her use of word order in subordinate clauses. She was improving fast, with me only correcting her occasionally. In other areas of difficulty, such as Dutch pronunciation, she made amazing progress. So, what was going on? She now refused any formal explanations for any questions she had about the Dutch language. This, as you can imagine was extremely frustrating for me, being a linguist and having lots of linguistic theory in my head.

The only conclusion I could draw from all this was that people learn languages in different ways. This may seem a simple conclusion, but it actually helped me tremendously when I became a language teacher.

What is important to learn from this, is that as a language learner you need to discover your own strategies and find out what works for you. The way to do this is to try different techniques and strategies that you hear about and see if they give you the right result.

As language teachers, we need to be sensitive to our students and help them discover their best way of learning and encourage them. I can’t remember how often I heard a great sigh of relief when I told my students this story about my wife and finished with saying: So we all learn differently. Relief especially from Asian students who are used to an education system that does not allow for individual learning styles.

Right and wrong ways

There are, however, right and wrong ways of doing things. While there are many ways to learn a language, there are also many wrong or inefficient ways. This is where we have to be objective and critical of ourselves. To give you an example: I have seen numerous Asian students wasting time in language laboratories, as they sat there listening passively to English tapes - arms folded, leaning back in their seats, waiting for the moment that the magic language wand would touch their mind and they would suddenly understand everything. Of course, this never happened and, in fact, this is a learning strategy that is useless. Listening without doing something, such as answering questions is usually a waste of time. However, it has been hard to try and convince some of these students to change their way, even when their accents were dreadful, their sentence construction messy and they needed speaking practice.

Some students do not see their own needs! Some students do not know how to learn a language! They need help. They need to be given new options, new ways of learning. Most language learners do not have many options, possibly because they have only ever learned one language, their native tongue; or because they have never really thought about language learning. Sometimes people who have no interest in language learning, are forced to learn a second language - many refugees are in this situation. Whatever the situation, this book will help you widen your thinking, give you new options and ways of doing things in language learning and teaching.

7 factors

that can make or break a language learner

A few years ago, I was asked to do a presentation on language learning and proficiency levels to a group of public servants at the government employment service. These public servants regularly came in contact with migrants and needed some advice on the language learning process, so they could place them into the appropriate courses. This challenged me to actually sit down and lists all the factors that are crucial in the language learning process. I came up with 7 major ones. They can work for you or against you. Some can be changed, some cannot. To be as effective as possible, all 7 must be taken into account when teaching or learning a language.

Factor 1  First language